Once again this morning, The Sun published an article about someone who suffered nonlife-threatening injuries.* Life-threatening is bad enough, but something severe enough to threaten nonlife — zombies, please take care — must be extraordinary.
Applying the Associated Press Stylebook’s rule — that the prefix non is not hyphenated, except when it is** — requires a little thought, a little attention, a little judgment. Supplies of those qualities appear to be running short.
*Yes, I wrote about the same construction in July. They don’t listen.
**Thank you, AP.
Thanks. I needed a good laugh this morning.
ReplyDeleteMark Twain's "on-the-other-side-of-the-mountains-lying village" still awaits us.
ReplyDelete(Yawn)
ReplyDeleteOh, you're talking about The Sun. It's a visual thing.
ReplyDeleteReminds me of a phrase flagged by one of my colleagues on the U.S. News proof desk when I worked there: a reference to "slaughtering carcasses" at a meatpacking plant. Either the plant's workflow was inefficient and they were redundantly killing already-dead hogs, or the hogs were coming back to life and had to be killed yet again. The latter would make for a new angle on the classic zombie flick.
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